"Do you know where that is?"
"Don't you?" Ascaros laughed again. "This won't be much of an expedition if you have no idea where to go."
"My companions learned of a place called Fiendslair. They believe it to be somewhere in the Umbral Basin."
"Correctly so." The shadowcaller looked past Isiem, gazing across the rocky expanse of Barrowmoor and all its forgotten kings, then turned back to his childhood friend. "But the Umbral Basin is a very large place, and very dangerous. Tell me about these companions. Not Chelaxians?"
"Not as you mean them. They are Chelish, but they have no loyalty to House Thrune. On the contrary: most are rebels, or not opposed to working with the rebellion."
"Who are they? What do they want from poor, long-dead Eledwyn?"
"The leader is a Sarenite cleric. An idealist, I think, but pragmatic in the service of those ideals. There's a paladin of Iomedae, and a dwarf with a fondness for traps. Preferably traps that explode. Then there's an Aspis agent, and his two bodyguards. And myself. What they want—what we all want—is a weapon that might be used against fiends. Something to break the diabolists' stranglehold on Cheliax. They call it a nightblade."
Ascaros stroked a gemmed cuff that peeped from under one black sleeve. Isiem hadn't noticed it before. It was made of silver that had been cut and hammered into the shape of a flayleaf garland. Onyx and moonstone cabochons gleamed amid the wiry stems.
The silversmith had clearly been Nidalese, but flayleaf was an odd inspiration for such a crafter. The plant was a powerful narcotic, commonly used to deaden pain. It was not favored in Pangolais. Yet there it was on Ascaros's wrist.
Isiem wondered what magic the bracelet held. Clearly it was enchanted with some dweomer; he didn't believe Ascaros would have worn it otherwise. But what?
The shadowcaller caught Isiem's look. One corner of his mouth curled in a thin smile, and he straightened his sleeve fastidiously, hiding the bracelet again. "Do you trust them?"
"Pardon?"
"Your allies. Do you trust them? Capturing you would earn considerable favor from House Thrune. Enough to get quite a few rebels' sins absolved, I would imagine."
A breeze skirled across Barrowmoor, rattling the talismans on the tomb poles. There were no fires on the hills, yet the wind carried a ghostly, impossible odor of woodsmoke and rancid, burning grease.
The gust tugged Isiem's long ivory hair loose of its bonds. Faintly irritated, he pulled it back and tied it again. "They will not betray me to House Thrune. Nor to the Umbral Court. You, on the other hand ..."
"You believe I might?" Ascaros asked softly.
"The thought has crossed my mind."
"Of course it has." The shadowcaller ran a thumb along one side of his staff, where runes were cut deeply into the ebon wood. He turned it toward Isiem, tipping it up so that the cloudy moonlight touched the sigils and allowed his former friend to see.
The marks designated the staff's bearer as a master of the Dusk Hall and a favored agent of the Umbral Court. Isiem felt an old familiar tingle of fear at the sight of the pattern; it was one that every student soon learned to dread in Pangolais. But his voice stayed even. "You've moved up in the world."
"I've had the benefit of a good teacher." Ascaros turned the staff's sigils away. Again a tight, thin smile touched his face and was gone.
"Silence? He must be nearing the end of his ten years' service. Have you freed him as you promised?"
Slowly Ascaros shook his head. His lips parted; then he hesitated, seemed almost to flinch, and closed his mouth. After another stretch of quiet he said: "That creature is ...more evil than you can know, Isiem."
"I can guess," the wizard said dryly. "I was there when you met him, remember."
"Yes." This time Ascaros did flinch. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, then shook away whatever thought or memory had come to him. "But what he said then barely touches it. I used to think demons were the vilest creatures to walk Golarion. I know better now. If I ever free him, it'll be so I can hurl him and his accursed mirror directly into the Eye of Abendego."
"But you used him all the same." Isiem gestured toward his old friend's staff and the tenebrous robes of his office. "Quite successfully, it seems."
"Seems," Ascaros echoed. Another long, uncomfortable silence fell between them. Another gust of wind whistled through the barrows, creating a haunting not-quite melody. It sounded like the singing of ghosts.
The shadowcaller grimaced and bowed his head. Abruptly, his bone-white skin darkened and wrinkled like paper held over a flame. His hands knotted into gnarled, bony claws sheathed in dead gray skin. Most of the black curls on his head vanished, leaving only a sparse, bedraggled fringe about the base of his skull. His nose shriveled into a desiccated twist of flesh. As the illusion that had masked his true self faded, he stood before Isiem revealed as a man more dead than alive.
"He could not stop the curse." Ascaros's smooth tenor had been replaced by a ruined, crackling rattle: a mummy's voice. His eyes, yellow-stained and rheumy, were slow to focus on his friend's. "Silence gave me power, but he could not—or would not—lessen its cost. I stand high in the courts of Pangolais, yes. But I am dying, Isiem. Faster than ever before."
"You've asked the clerics for help?" Isiem asked quietly. What his friend had become horrified him, but he was Nidalese, and his first response was to hide all that he felt.
Ascaros's answering laugh was bitter. It hissed through the gaps between his shrunken, fanglike teeth. "The Kuthites? They tell me to embrace it. To revel in the uniqueness of this pain, and in the power that it affords me. Their lips get moist when they speak of it. No, I think it is safe to say that they have not much interest in helping me find a cure."
"I imagine the cleric leading our expedition would be willing to help an ally. I cannot promise he will be able."
"I'd hardly expect such luck." With a scowl at his own withered limbs, Ascaros renewed his masking illusion. Once again, he appeared as the man he might have been, instead of the monster he'd become. "It would be entirely too much to hope that one of the two or three living priests in this age who might counter Mesandroth's magic would happen to be in your party. Of course, if I'm wrong, I'll happily sing hymns of praise to the Dawnflower. But my expectation is that Eledwyn will have come closer to breaking her old master's spells than your cleric can."
"Then you will aid us?"
"I will come with you." Ascaros closed the remaining distance between them, leaning on the tall black staff as he picked his way down the hillside. "My assistance is contingent on my being permitted to enter Eledwyn's workshop alongside the rest of you."
"I'm not certain my companions will want an agent of the Umbral Court coming with us."
"They can swallow their qualms or go without my aid." Ascaros shrugged. "But, in this matter, I am an Umbral agent in name only."
"Explain, please."
"They wouldn't help me." Ascaros swept a hand across the front of his silver-hooked robes. His upper lip curled into a snarl. "The Umbral Court chose to leave me like this. To exploit me like this. I don't feel, when it comes to my ancestor's curse, that I owe any particular loyalty to Pangolais. This is for myself, Isiem. I'm going to save my own life. Of course I'll tell them otherwise, so they'll permit me to leave. But make no mistake: I go into this with my own interests at heart."
"Seldom have I been so relieved to hear such bald selfishness," Isiem said wryly. "Is there any risk that the Umbral Court will learn of your motives and pursue you?"
"Only if I'm stupid or clumsy. I don't believe you've ever known me to be either."
"Not especially, no," Isiem agreed. "Even without worrying about Nidalese hunters at our backs, though, it is likely to be a dangerous journey."
"Really." Ascaros's tone dripped acid. "Dangerous? An expedition into the Umbral Basin to find a laboratory where a half-mad wizard experimented on demons? Surely not."
Isiem acknowledged defeat with a rueful little nod. "Fine. Do you
know what the dangers are? Our information is sadly limited on that point."
"The woman wanted to kill demons. I imagine it would be safe to assume she kept some available to practice her attempts—why else would she call the place Fiendslair? I would further imagine that Mesandroth freed them when he killed his traitorous apprentice and cast her work into ruin. It would fit his sensibilities. And as demons do not age or starve or die—unless they kill each other, as these may well have—I expect we'll find some waiting for us inside. Presuming we get inside, which may be quite difficult in itself. Mesandroth was a man with many enemies, and one well versed in wards. He taught the same caution to his underlings."
"What sort of wards?"
"The first line of defense will be concealment. But that, I think, is something I would prefer to discuss in the company of your scholar-cleric." Ascaros stretched languidly. He lifted the spiked chain that signified his allegiance to Zon-Kuthon, god of darkness and pain, studying the twisted steel with pointed intensity. "Are you satisfied that I came to you in good faith? Will you let me join your little expedition?"
"I'm satisfied as to your goodwill," Isiem said, "but it's not for me to let you join. I can, however, take you to meet the others. Come."
∗ ∗ ∗
"Two Nidalese? You must be joking." Ganoven stalked furiously around the perimeter of the tiny room, undeterred by either crowding or clutter from his display. He kept a hand on the hilt of his rapier, pushing the weapon out behind him so that its scabbard twitched like the tail of an angry cat. "Are they both going to demand full partners' shares? Why not just cede the whole damned expedition to them?"
Lacking any better options for privacy, the party had crowded into the rented room that Kyril and Ena shared in Pezzack. The place was intended for laborers who needed little more than a mattress between long days of work, and it was small with just the dwarf and paladin inside. With all of them crammed in, there was hardly space to breathe. Isiem sat cross-legged alongside Kyril on one of the room's lumpy straw mattresses. Ena and Teglias shared the other. Ascaros stood in a corner. Ganoven, who had been the last to arrive, had nowhere to go, which visibly added to his irritation.
The Aspis agent had ordered Pulcher and Copple to stay outside. Ostensibly they were to guard the hallway against interlopers, since there was no room for them inside, but Isiem thought that Ganoven had also done it simply to show that he could. The black-bearded half-elf seemed to be obsessed with social ranks. Any slight to his standing rankled him badly, and it seemed that he viewed this whole meeting as just such an insult.
No one else seemed to be concerned by his ire. Teglias regarded the shadowcaller with the same compassionate gravity that Isiem imagined he'd show a repentant parishioner seeking forgiveness for some minor sin.
"I understand you're descended from Mesandroth Fiendlorn," the cleric said.
"Yes," Ascaros said. He had retreated behind a wall of icy reserve. His face looked so like a mask that Isiem had to remind himself that it literally was one; the illusion mirrored its wearer's Nidalese reserve with uncanny precision.
"Do you think that will help us on this expedition?"
"It might. It might hinder you just as much, or more. Mesandroth was fond of setting tests and traps for his blood, and he had no mercy for those who failed to prove themselves worthy. My presence may trigger challenges that would not exist for you otherwise."
Ganoven snorted. "Are you trying to persuade us to take you or to leave you behind?"
"Neither." Ascaros gave the Aspis agent a flat look and dismissed him, returning his attention to Teglias. "I want you to know what you'll be getting."
"I believe we have a fair sense of that." Teglias exchanged a glance with Kyril, who nodded almost imperceptibly. The cleric turned back to Ascaros. "What's your price?"
"Not a partnership share." Ascaros folded his hands atop each other, wrapping both around his rune-scribed staff. The gems studded into his flayleaf bracelet were luminous under the black cloth of his sleeve. "I will take whatever of Mesandroth's work, or Eledwyn's, may be useful for my needs. I doubt there will be any overlap with your interests."
"What if there is?" Ganoven snapped. He'd chosen to wear blue velvet slashed with crimson today, and while his outfit was doubtlessly the height of fashion in Egorian, its starched ruff and puffed sleeves looked ridiculous next to Ascaros's umbral robes and Teglias's simple, practical tunic and trousers of undyed cotton.
"There is not," Ascaros said coolly. "I'm told that you seek a weapon to use against fiends. If that is true, your goals and mine have no conflict. What I seek in Eledwyn's lair has nothing to do with the work that interests you."
"What do you want?" Ena had been darning a pair of ancient woolen socks while listening to the others converse. The socks might have been beige, once upon a time, but long use had faded them into a shapeless, distinctly unappealing brownish gray. Isiem had a suspicion that she kept them around just to annoy Ganoven. If so, it was clearly working. The Aspis agent stiffened and raised his nose a notch whenever he chanced to look in her direction.
Ascaros didn't seem to notice the byplay between Ganoven and the dwarf. "Before he tried possessing demons," he said, "Mesandroth sought immortality through living undeath. Not as a lich is undead, or a vampire, but a hybrid that could take their longevity without giving up its soul.
"He did not wish to risk himself in these experiments, of course. He chose to infect his kin instead. The earliest of them, seeking favor as his apprentices, may have accepted the touch of undeath willingly. At the very least, it's possible that they had more insight into what was done, and how, and with what opportunities to escape. That is the knowledge I seek. It has nothing to do with your nightblade."
The dwarf's scarred eyebrows climbed. "You carry that curse?"
"I do."
"Well, that's a bugger." Ena grunted and returned to her darning. "But I suppose we'll take you if you're not near dropping dead right now."
"What?" Ganoven sounded ready to strangle on his own tongue. His forehead flushed nearly as red as the accents on his hose. "Is there to be no negotiation? No consultation? Do I get no say?"
"Oh, calm down." Ena chuckled under her breath, just loudly enough that the Aspis agent would be able to hear her across the room. "Try to have some dignity. Of course he'll come. We need a second arcanist. This one's skilled and willing to work cheap."
"We don't need two Nidalese," Ganoven insisted. "We have one. Fine. But Teglias is a historian and I'm a scholar of no small accomplishment myself, need I remind you. This is a research expedition, and we're more than capable of doing that research without them. I fail to see why we need two of these shadow-besotted spellslingers, especially if we have to pay them separately."
"Because this is going to be a dangerous trip," Ena said patiently, as her needle made quick, expert flicks through the grubby wool toe of her sock. "There's a good chance we won't all come back alive. Now, in your case, that might not cause me much sorrow. But if we lose our only wizard in the depths of some arcane dungeon, why, then I will shed some tears, and I'll very much regret not having brought a spare."
While the Aspis agent floundered for a response, Kyril cleared her throat.
"I must ask for some assurances first." The paladin fixed her dark-eyed gaze on the shadowcaller in his silver-stitched robes. "I am a servant of the Inheritor, and I cannot countenance anything that might reflect poorly on her honor. As long as we work together, you will comport yourself in a manner suitable for one of her allies."
Ascaros answered with a quick, indifferent nod. "Fine."
"That easy?" Ena put her finished sock away. Its toe was a knob of woolly scar tissue easily half an inch thick. Isiem couldn't see why she needed to wear boots with socks like that. "Always figured it'd be harder to convert a Kuthite."
"Hardly converting. But we do have some experience with accepting pointless and burdensome orders from Chelaxians," Ascaros said frostily.
"Wonderful!" Teglias's blue eyes twinkled with mischief. "We're just getting started."
Chapter Six
Into the Valley
After a sparse breakfast of fried bread and plum conserve, they left Pezzack. Ena rode a shaggy gray pony; Ganoven chose a showy black steed. The others rode nondescript animals in varying shades of dun and brown.
Not one of their steeds would last out the day. Isiem had conjured them all out of the ether, although he had allowed them to choose their own mounts' appearances. They would not be riding far, and real horses would only have burdened them.
"I thought paladins rode unicorns," Isiem said lightly, watching Kyril climb onto a stolid farm horse who seemed better suited for pulling a beer wagon than carrying a soldier into battle. The Iomedaean had donned a set of plate mail for the road. The metal had been deliberately scuffed to a dull gray, and she wore a plain brown cloak over it to further drab her figure, but despite her efforts to make herself unremarkable, Kyril could not conceal what she was.
Radiance seemed almost to emanate from her: a strength and serenity that spoke of divine certainty. Unicorns were rare even among the holiest paladins, and Isiem had meant his comment in jest, but he really could imagine her riding such a steed. It would suit her perfectly.
"Some do," Kyril replied, patting her conjured horse's neck, "but I've found it uncomfortably showy. It's not always easy to take a unicorn where I need to go."
"You did seem suspiciously comfortable disguising yourself in Pezzack," Isiem agreed, mounting his own shadow-spun horse. Out of habit, he had rendered his in the midnight hues that the shadowcallers of Pangolais preferred. Even its saddle and bridle were silver-trimmed black.
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